Apple announced the latest version of its Mac operating system called OS X 10.9 Mavericks back in June. If you're a Mac user that's been counting the days until you can get your hands on Mavericks, some good news has surfaced today.

Apple has released OS X 10.9 Mavericks Golden Master to developers. The Golden Master version of the software is the final version of the operating system that will be installed on all new Macs and will be available for existing customers to download.

Finder Tabs

It is likely that Apple will launch OS X 10.9 later this month, possibly to coincide with the launch of new iPads and the new Mac Pro. Mavericks will bring several new features including support for iBooks, Finder Tabs, integrated Apple Maps, and a new power saving feature called App Nap.

At the same time the Mavericks Golden Master was released to developers, Apple also offered up Xcode 5.0.1 Golden Master as well. Xcode is a developer toolset for Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad development. It is expected to launch to consumers alongside Mavericks.

OSX costs $20 apiece because1) it's designed only for Macs, running with a very restricted set of hardware;2) technical support? either go to an Apple store near you or peruse online resources;3) there is absolutely zero business and enterprise IT support on OSX. Group Policy is not even available in a limited form

Furthermore, how do you manage hundreds, if not thousands, of disparate OSX and iOS devices as a company's IT administrator? You are already overworked with dozens of minor service calls as is. Windows allows you to manage devices systemwide. With Macs and iOS, you must micromanage each device separately.

There is no free lunch with a $20 "service pack", versus a full-blown OS and support for $200.

Apple used to release OSX about once a year and charge $80-100 for the same updates. Apple charges what Apple wants to charge because Apple customers pay what Apple wants to charge.

Anyway from a technical standpoint, neither Win.8 nor 10.7 or 10.8 had any feature worth upgrading to. They merely bastardized their OS to have more of a tablet feel. Features of 10.9 such as compressed memory will be interesting to see in action. How will they affect performance and how will they affect battery life. Will systems LPDDR memory get more benefit than systems with DDR? It will be interesting to see.

Yet the bash-ee started off this thread by bashing Windows without bothering checking his facts (comparing previous version Windows vs OS X upgrade costs).

btw - what does having AD on a Mac have to do with upgrade distribution in a closed network? Microsoft provides a means to do that. Does Apple? Or are you forced to have your IT team integrate in expensive 3rd-party components that may or may not have been built specifically for OS X?